Applying Lateral Wisdom to Personal, Organizational, and Church Learning

June 10, 2010

The Power of Attraction- Attracting What You Need Into Your Learning Community

Have
you ever run into the right person at just the right time? Have you meet a
person who has the knowledge to help you solve a problem, or who provides the right
information to help you with an issue you are trying to tackle at school. You
may have not been looking for the person, but you just stumbled upon them. That
is serendipity.

Attracting What We Were Not Looking For

Serendipity-
The simple definition of serendipity is finding what we didn’t know what we
were looking for. It is unexpected encounters with people and they knowledge
they posses.

But
what if, instead of accidentally stumbling into a serendipitous encounter, you
could attract or draw these people to you--a form of purposeful serendipity? We
would be able to attract whom we need to learn from—and attraction is a
powerful force.

I have advocated that technology
and other key drivers have created an environment in which individual
Professional Learning Communities can be networked with, not only other
Professional Learning Communities, but useful individuals such as specialists,
district personnel, researchers, consultants, etc., physically and virtually. I call
this model the Professional
Networked Learning Collaborative.

Authors John Hagel III, John
Seely Brown, and Lang Davison explain why attraction, or purposefully shaping
serendipitous encounters is so important in their book The Power of Pull. The
reason that the PNLC is so powerful is because is seeks to attract the people
with the knowledge we need to meet our student’s needs.

A
PNLC attracts those people who know what we need, who have wrestled with our
current learning issues, and who have the tacit knowledge we need to meet the
needs of our students.

Attraction-
“…techniques focused for drawing people or resources to us that we were not
even aware existed but that prove to be relevant and valuable.”

The
Super Node

Each
member of a PNLC becomes a super node. The person is the portal to the network. The
person is an autonomous communication and collaboration node. Each member can
potentially leverage not only their network, but also the network of others who
are in their network. This principle is known as Metcalfe’s Law. The
number of potential connections between nodes grows more quickly than the
number of nodes. The total value of the network where each node can reach every
other node in the network grows with the square of the number of nodes. In
other words, when PNLC members connect their networks, it creates more value
than the sum of networks independently.

Our networks can help us attract
serendipity.

Why
Serendipity

“We
need serendipitous encounters with people because of the importance of the
ideas these people carry with them and the connections they have. People carry
tacit knowledge. You can’t learn brain surgery just from a text…you need to
stand next to someone who already knows and learn by doing. Tacit knowledge
exists only in people’s heads.”

Serendipitous
encounters become a rich flow of tacit knowledge.

“…serendipitous
encounters with people prove to be more fruitful that an isolated encounter
with new objects or data. We not only have the opportunity to access the tacit
knowledge other people have gained from their experiences—and to share our
own—but can begin to create relationships that may themselves spawn new tacit
knowledge as we begin to collaborate on areas of shared interest.”

Think
about the number of educational articles you have read about literacy, mathematics,
technology, RtI, common assessments, educational leadership, or Professional
Learning Communities. Think about how many times you have attended a staff
development session and left thinking, “Okay, but what do I do next.” You need
the tacit knowledge of someone who has been there and done that. You need
someone to show you how, share his or her experience, and put it in real life
context for you.

PNLCs
help attract people who have knowledge in the educational challenges, problems,
or situation you face. They are fellow travelers down these educational
avenues. And, as the authors state, fellow travelers amplify us.

“If
you are exploring a new territory—an edge—it’s very helpful to learn from the
experience of others in similar contexts. Serendipitous encounters thus help
amplify our efforts by connecting us with our fellow explorers—exactly the
people who can help us in our own explorations.”

One
of the benefits of tacit knowledge flows from our fellow travelers is that it
cuts down on the time we might waste. We know that every moment is precious.
There is not a moment to waste when it comes to meeting the needs of our
students in the school day. Attracting tacit knowledge through our network
creates a high rate of return on our attention.

Return
On Attention- ROA

“In
a world where attraction and return on attention—defined as the value gained
relative to the time and attention invested—are becoming increasingly
important, those who master the techniques required to shape serendipity will
likely profit far more than those who simply wait for it to surface.”

Shaping
serendipity involves the blending of three elements: environments, practices,
and preparedness. We will look at those in a coming post.

Ongoing
Connections- Building Relationships

The
other benefit to attracting people through our PNLCs is that we create more than
just one time encounters, but mutual reinforcing and benefiting relationships.
While you may learn something today, you may have something to teach tomorrow.

“Serendipity becomes much more than a
one-time encounter or an end in itself: It becomes the crucial means of access
to rich flows of tacit knowledge both now and in the future.”

The
Professional Networked Learning Collaborative attracts serendipitous
connections through our super nodes of multiple connections to provide the
tacit, real world contextual knowledge we need to meet the needs of students.